WHAT  CONSTITUTES 
A  MISSIONARY  CALL 


ROBERT  E.  SPEER 


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What  Constitutes 
A  Missionary  Call 


An  Address  to 
College  Students 


By 

ROBERT  E.  SPEER,  M.A.,  D.D.,  Litt.D. 

Secretary,  Presbyterian  Board  of  Foreign  Missions 


Student  Volunteer  Movement  for  Foreign  Missions 
25  Madison  Avenue  -  -  New  York  City 


COPYRIGHT,  1923 

Student  Volunteer  Movement  for  Foreign  Missions 


Price:  15  cents  each;  ten  for  a  dollar; 
$8.50  per  hundred  (postage  extra). 


WHAT  CONSTITUTES  A  MISSIONARY  CALL 

By  Robert  E.  Speer 


What  constitutes  a  missionary  call  ?  I  think  almost  all 
of  us  are  familiar  with  the  issue  that  is  involved  in  this 
question;  some  of  us  because  we  have  faced  it  in  our 
own  lives  and  have  tried  to  work  our  way  through  to  an 
answer;  and  some  of  us  because  we  have  met  it  in  the 
lives  of  other  men,  some  of  whom  were  honestly  endeav¬ 
oring  to  find  an  answer  to  it,  and  others  of  whom  were 
making  it  a  cover  for  dismissing  the  thought  of  their  pos¬ 
sible  missionary  duty. 

In  two  regards  it  is  a  good  sign  that  men  ask  this 
question  with  reference  to  the  work  of  foreign  missions 
and  their  duty  to  it.  It  suggests  that  men  think  of  the 
missionary  enterprise  as  a  solemn  enterprise,  an  enter¬ 
prise  that  is  related  in  a  singular  way  to  God,  and  over 
which  God  exercises  a  singular  care;  and  in  the  second 
place  it  indicates  that  they  believe,  if  they  are  sincere, 
that  their  lives  are  owned  by  a  Person  who  has  a  right 
to  direct  them  and  whose  call  they  must  await.  When 
that  has  been  said,  however,  I  think  everything  has  been 
said  that  can  be  allowed  in  favor  of  the  question,  and  one 
must  go  on  at  once  to  say  that  it  is  a  question  which  can 
easily  become  thoroughly  heathen  and  un-Christian. 


3 


Departmentalizing  Life 

By  what  right  do  we  sever  our  life  into  departments, 
either  geographically  or  otherwise,  and  say  with  refer¬ 
ence  to  certain  departments  of  life,  “Now  I  will  not  enter 
upon  that  sphere  of  life  until  I  have  a  call  different  in 
degree  or  kind  from  the  call  with  which  I  would  be 
satisfied  to  enter  upon  any  other?”  What  right  has  any 
man  to  be  willing  to  study  law  under  any  less  positive 
assurance  that  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  he  should  do  it 
than  a  man  must  have  who  goes  out  into  the  mission  field? 
You  and  I  have  no  right  to  set  off  certain  departments 
of  life  from  other  departments  and  to  say  of  those, 
“Those  departments  are  different  from  others;  we  will 
not  think  of  entering  upon  those  without  special  divine 
sanction,  without  an  unusual  sort  of  divine  leading 
different  from  the  kind  with  which  we  would  be  content 
to  enter  upon  any  other  branch  of  service.”  WTiat  is 
there  in  the  Rio  Grande  river  to  compel  a  man  to  have 
one  kind  of  assurance  that  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  he 
should  preach  on  the  south  side  of  it,  and  another  kind 
that  he  should  preach  on  the  north  side  of  it?  Is  this 
world  so  different  in  different  parts  of  it  that  I  should 
be  willing  to  work  in  Texas  on  grounds  that  I  should 
not  regard  as  sufficient  to  allow  me  to  work  in  Mexico? 
What  is  there  in  the  oceans  that  warrants  a  man  in  de¬ 
manding  evidence  that  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  he 
should  work  on  one  side  of  them  that  he  does  not  demand 


4 


as  justifying  his  working  on  the  other?  The  conception 
of  distinction  in  the  sacredness  of  spheres  of  life  is  pagan. 
Christianity  contends  that  the  whole  life  and  all  service 
are  to  be  consecrated  and  that  no  man  dare  do  anything 
but  the  will  of  God  and  can  know  nothing  less  or  more 
regarding  any  course  of  action  or  any  life  decision  than 
that  it  is  God’s  will  that  he  should  follow  it.  And  there 
can  be  no  more  than  this  either  required  or  possible  in 
the  case  of  foreign  missions. 

Suppose  I  were  a  workman  on  a  plantation,  and 
cotton  were  ready  to  be  picked,  and  the  order  had  gone 
out  from  my  employer  that  the  cotton  must  be  picked 
as  soon  as  possible  all  over  his  plantation:  because  he 
had  not  come  to  speak  to  me  personally,  might  I  plead, 
“In  the  absence  of  any  specific  order  from  my  master 
to  pick  cotton  I  will  go  a-fishing,  or  I  will  do  some 
business  of  my  own?”  Is  it  not  a  fair  analogy?  You 
and  I  are  in  a  world  where  the  Master’s  work  needs  to 
be  done.  He  has  told  us  to  go  out  into  this  world  and 
do  His  work.  He  Himself  called  it  a  harvest  field. 
Because  He  has  not  come  and  spoken  individually  to  us 
and  said,  “Go  and  reap  there,”  are  we  therefore  free  to 
go  about  our  own  business,  or  not  to  reap  at  all? 

Erroneous  Conception  of  a  Call 

And  if  men  are  going  to  draw  lines  of  division  be¬ 
tween  different  departments  of  service,  what  reasoning 


5 


leads  them  to  think  that  it  requires  less  divine  sanction 
for  a  man  to  spend  his  life  in  nominally  Christian  lands 
in  commercial  service  than  it  requires  for  him  to  go  out 
in  missionary  service  to  lands  which  are  not  Christian 
at  all?  If  men  are  to  have  special  calls  for  anything, 
they  ought  to  have  special  calls  to  go  about  their  own 
business,  to  choose  the  easy  places,  to  make  money,  and 
to  gratify  their  own  purposes  and  ambitions.  How  can 
any  honest  Christian  man  demand  a  special  call  as  the 
warrant  for  not  doing  that  sort  of  thing,  and  say  that 
unless  he  gets  a  specific  call  of  God  to  preach  the  gospel 
here  or  abroad  he  has  a  right  to  spend  his  life  as  he  may 
please?  Is  it  not  absurd  to  allege  that  a  special  call  is 
necessary  to  foreign  missions,  while  a  man  may  go  into 
business  or  law,  or  medicine,  or  follow  his  own  will  in 
problems  with  no  divine  call  or  special  warrant  at  all? 
If  a  special  call  is  ever  requisite  it  would  seem  to  be  far 
more  requisite  for  these  things  than  for  the  missionary 
service  of  mankind. 

There  is  a  dilemma  involved  in  this  erroneous  con¬ 
ception  of  the  missionary  call.  We  believe  surely  that 
God  has  an  interest  in  the  evangelization  of  the  world. 
If  He  has  an  interest  in  the  evangelization  of  the  world 
and  a  purpose  for  its  accomplishment  He  must  have 
“called”  enough  men,  on  the  theory  that  He  does  call 
men  in  that  special  way,  to  evangelize  it.  Well,  it  has 
not  been  evangelized.  So  either  God  has  not  called  them, 


6 


or  else  He  has  called  them  and  they  have  not  heard. 
You  who  believe  that  this  kind  of  a  special  call  is  neces¬ 
sary  must  believe  in  consequence  that  there  are  a  great 
many  men  and  women  who  have  been  called  in  this  su¬ 
pernatural  way  into  the  mission  work  and  have  not  gone, 
or  else  that  God  does  not  purpose  the  present  evangeliza¬ 
tion  of  the  world,  or  else  you  will  have  to  abandon  this 
notion  of  special  missionary  calls. 

Variety  in  Calls 

After  all,  what  do  men  mean  when  they  speak  of  the 
necessity  of  a  special  missionary  call?  Do  they  mean 
that  a  missionary  must  have  some  kind  of  manifestly 
supernatural  indication  of  the  divine  will?  “A  call,” 
men  say,  “for  example,  like  that  which  came  to  the 
apostle  Paul;  I  would  be  satisfied  with  that.  Or  the 
kind  of  a  call  I  have  heard  Bishop  Thoburn  speak  of; 
I  would  be  satisfied  with  that.”  I  believe  that  St.  Paul 
and  Bishop  Thoburn  had  these  experiences,  but  I  do  not 
believe  that  it  is  necessary  that  everyone  should  have 
them.  David  Livingston  had  no  such  call.  He  says 
himself  that  he  went  simply  out  of  a  sense  of  duty. 
William  Goodell  had  no  such  call.  He  consecrated  him¬ 
self  behind  an  old  tree  stump  at  Andover  over  his  Bible 
and  the  last  command  of  Jesus  Christ.  Henry  Martyn, 
William  Carey,  Keith-Falconer,  nine-tenths  of  the  great 
missionaries  of  the  world  never  had  any  such  calls.  Now 


7 


if  a  call  like  this  is  necessary  before  a  man  may  be 
sure  that  it  is  his  duty  to  go  out  to  the  mission  field, 
did  these  men  do  wrong  in  going?  Shall  we  say  that  the 
noblest  men  who  ever  served  God  in  the  world  flew  in 
the  face  of  Providence  because  they  did  not  have  the 
particular  sort  of  call  you  are  asking  for? 

Or  a  man  says  he  wants  a  dream.  The  other  night  I 
dreamed  that  I  went  trout  fishing,  and  I  met  a  lady,  and 
she  asked  me  for  my  rod,  and  I  loaned  it  to  her,  and  she 
cast  the  fly  through  a  window  in  a  grain  elevator  and 
caught  a  little  black  puppy.  Now  do  you  mean  to  tell 
me  that  that  was  a  divine  indication  of  what  my  course 
of  action  was  to  be  on  the  following  day?  And  yet  there 
are  some  who  smile  at  such  absurdities  who  have  hid 
behind  the  evasion  that  they  lack  a  nocturnal  missionary 
call,  who  avow  that  if  only  some  divine  leading  might 
come  to  them  in  the  kind  that  came  in  his  dream  to 
Paul,  they  would  go.  Dreams  do  not  exempt  men  from 
the  use  of  reason.  God  does  not  call  men  in  absurd  and 
frivolous  ways.  If  God  is  going  to  have  dealings  with 
you.  He  will  have  them  in  the  broad  daylight.  That  was 
the  time  of  all  but  one  of  Paul’s  missionary  visions.  It 
is  not  necessary  for  Him  to  go  about  in  the  night  when 
our  wits  are  asleep  and  through  our  sub-conscious  selves 
to  show  us  what  may  be  His  will  for  our  lives.  He  will 
deal  with  us  as  men  of  reason,  and  He  expects  us  to  judge 
the  facts  of  an  education  and  experience  and  knowledge 


8 


and  capacity,  and  to  determine  rationally  what  may  be 
the  purpose  of  God  for  us  as  revealed  in  these  facts  of 
the  world  and  of  our  own  lives. 

The  Place  of  Emotion 

Or  a  man  says  that  he  does  not  feel  specially  called. 
Well,  feelings  are  often  a  mere  matter  of  health;  more 
often  they  are  a  matter  of  other  things.  They  are  not 
lawless  and  unordered.  You  and  I  do  not  regulate  our 
lives  by  mere  feelings  in  other  regards.  Feelings  spring 
from  the  stock  of  information  in  our  intellects,  from 
the  attitude  of  our  wills,  from  the  bearing  of  our  hearts 
toward  God  and  toward  the  world.  If  we  do  not  ^'^feel 
called”  the  most  natural  explanation  is  not  that  we  are 
not  called,  but  that  our  feelings  may  spring  from  unin¬ 
formed  minds,  from  careless  hearts,  from  unsurrendered 
wills.  This  is  the  explanation  of  the  absence  of  calls 
which  Dean  Vaughan  suggested:  “Know,  and  you  will 
feel;  know,  and  you  will  pray;  know,  and  you  will  help. 
You  will  be  ashamed  of  the  sluggishness,  of  the  isolation, 
of  the  selfishness  which  has  made  you  think  only  of 
your  own  people  and  your  father’s  house.” 

Need  for  Discrimination 

A  great  deal  of  the  confusion  that  surrounds  this 
subject  springs  from  the  failure  to  discriminate  between 
two  clearly  different  things:  one,  the  will  of  God  for 


9 


me;  and  the  other,  the  method  of  the  manifestation  of 
that  will  to  me.  It  is  a  matter  of  no  consequence  to  me 
how  God  reveals  His  will  to  me;  what  I  want  to  know 
is  what  that  will  is.  It  may  come  in  some  mysterious 
way;  it  may  come  from  the  voice  of  a  friend;  it  may 
come  through  the  influence  of  some  address  or  book.  I 
care  not;  the  supreme  thing  is  that  God  has  a  will  for 
every  man  of  us,  and  that  no  man  has  any  right  to 
specify  one  way,  and  least  of  all  some  magical  and 
abnormal  way  in  which  that  will  must  be  revealed  to 
him,  nor  has  he  any  right  to  discriminate  against  any 
one  field  of  life-work  by  conditioning  God  and  requiring 
of  Him  some  peculiar  mode  of  procedure  in  summoning 
him  to  that  work. 

The  Christian  Presumption 

The  whole  matter  reduces  itself  to  this  simple  prop¬ 
osition.  There  is  a  general  obligation  resting  upon 
Christian  men  to  see  that  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  is 
preached  to  the  world.  You  and  I  need  no  special  call 
to  apply  that  general  call  to  our  lives.  We  do  need  a 
special  call  to  exempt  us  from  its  application  to  our  lives. 
In  other  words,  the  presumption  under  which  we  are 
living  may  be  held  to  be  the  presumption  that  the  will 
of  God  desires  without  failure  or  delay  that  the  gospel 
of  His  son  Jesus  Christ,  the  only  Saviour,  should  be 
made  known  to  the  whole  world.  We  need  no  special 


10 


divine  revelation  to  our  own  personal  lives  to  indicate 
that  we  fall  under  that  general  duty.  What  we  need  is 
a  special  call  to  assure  us  who  are  young  and  free  and 
qualified  to  go  that  we  are  exempt  from  personal  obe¬ 
dience  to  tliat  presumptive  and  general  obligation. 

• 

But  there  are  some  who  say,  “I  deny  that  there  is 
any  such  presumption.  The  presumption  is  in  favor  of 
a  man’s  staying  just  where  he  was  born.”  Well,  then,  if 
there  is  such  a  presumption  as  that,  it  is  overcome  by 
the  greater  need  of  the  world.  When  a  man  stands  face 
to  face  with  such  a  need  as  that  which  exists  here,  and 
then  contrasts  it  with  the  need  that  exists  over  there,  I 
believe  he  must  see  that  that  need  overcomes  any  pre¬ 
sumption,  if  such  did  exist,  in  behalf  of  a  man’s  staying 
here.  But  I  deny  that  there  is  any  such  presumption. 
You  cannot  defend  the  presumption  that  every  man 
ought  to  stay  in  the  condition  in  which  he  is  born.  If 
I  am  born  in  a  deadly,  unhealthful  region,  is  there  a 
presumption  that  I  should  stay  there?  If  I  am  born  or 
grow  up  a  kleptomaniac,  or  a  miser  in  the  matter  of 
spiritual  goods  or  any  other,  is  there  presumption  in 
favor  of  my  continuing  so?  It  is  not  warrantable  to 
allege  that  the  mere  fact  of  having  been  born  in  such 
and  such  a  condition  puts  one  under  a  presumption  of 
duty  to  remain  here.  The  fact  that  I  was  born  in  a 
relatively  Christian  land  creates  the  contrary  presump¬ 
tion,  the  presumption,  namely,  that  I  am  to  carry  Christ 


who  is  known  here  to  the  lands  where  He  is  not  known 
so  well  or  at  all. 

There  are  men  who  say,  “No,  you  are  unfair  in  that. 
We  hold  that  there  is  no  presumption  either  way,  that 
every  man  ought  to  stand  with  a  perfectly  open  and  im¬ 
partial  mind  before  the  question  of  the  duty  of  his 
life  to  the  world,  not  casting  the  weight  on  either  side 
of  the  scale.”  That  would  be  all  right  if  we  were  living 
in  little  boats  out  in  the  middle  of  the  Pacific  ocean,  but 
it  is  impossible  so  long  as  we  are  here.  No  presumption! 
On  the  contrary,  every  day  the  atmosphere  in  which 
we  live  coerces  and  shapes  us  in  spite  of  ourselves  and 
creates  a  powerful  actual  presumption.  All  those  ten¬ 
tacles  that  every  day  are  clinging  closer  and  closer  to  us 
are  setting  at  prejudice  the  interests  of  the  other  half 
of  the  world.  We  do  not  live  where  it  is  possible  for 
any  of  us  to  say,  “I  will  just  move  along  steadily,  no 
presumption  on  either  side,  until  some  special  indication 
of  duty  comes  to  me.”  I  believe  that  Keith-Falconer  was 
expressing  the  truth  when  he  closed  his  last  address  to 
the  students  of  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow  with  the  sen¬ 
tence:  “While  vast  continents  are  shrouded  in  almost 
utter  darkness,  and  hundreds  of  millions  suffer  the  hor¬ 
rors  of  heathenism  and  of  Islam,  the  burden  of  proof 
rests  on  you  to  show  that  the  circumstances  in  which 
God  has  placed  you  were  meant  by  God  to  keep  you 
out  of  the  foreign  field.”  In  other  words,  each  of  us 


12 


stands  under  a  presumptive  obligation  to  give  his  life  to 
the  world  unless  we  have  some  real  special  exemption 
that  excuses  us  from  the  weight  of  this  general  and  pre¬ 
sumptive  obligation. 

I  am  willing  to  go  further  than  this.  If  I  were 
standing  by  the  bank  of  a  stream,  and  some  little  chil¬ 
dren  were  drowning  in  the  stream,  I  would  not  need  any 
oflRcer  of  the  law  to  come  along  and  serve  on  me  some 
legal  paper,  in  which  my  name  was  definitely  entered,  com¬ 
manding  me  under  such  and  such  penalties  to  rescue  those 
drowning  children.  I  should  despise  myself  if  I  should 
stand  there,  with  the  possibility  of  saving  those  little 
lives,  waiting  until  by  some  authoritative  proceeding  I  was 
personally  designated  to  rescue  them.  Or,  I  have  some 
neighbors  who  are  starving,  and  I  have  bread  in  abund¬ 
ance,  and  I  stand  and  watch  them  day  by  day,  with 
pinched  faces,  starving  and  ravenous,  while  I  have  bread 
in  abundance  and  to  spare.  I  do  not  need  anybody  to 
come  with  a  court  order  specifying  me  as  the  individual 
bound  to  feed  those  hungry  souls.  You  would  not,  either. 
Why  do  we  apply,  in  a  matter  of  infinitely  more  conse¬ 
quence,  principles  that  we  would  despise  if  anybody 
should  suggest  that  we  should  apply  them  in  the  prac¬ 
tical  affairs  of  our  daily  life?  Listen  for  a  moment  to 
the  call  of  the  hungry  world,  feel  for  one  hour  its  suf¬ 
ferings,  sympathize  for  one  moment  with  its  woes,  and 
then  regard  it  just  as  you  would  regard  human  want  in 


13 


your  neighborhood,  or  the  want  that  you  meet  as  you 
pass  down  the  street,  or  anywhere  in  life.  Every  one 
of  us  rests  under  a  sort  of  general  obligation  to  give  life 
and  time  and  possession  to  the  evangelization  of  the  lives 
everywhere  who  have  never  heard  of  Jesus  Christ,  and 
we  are  bound  to  go,  unless  we  can  offer  some  true  ground 
of  exemption  which  we  could  with  a  clear  conscience 
present  to  Christ,  and  be  sure  of  His  approval  of  it. 

Exemptions:  Language 

Now  what  grounds  of  exemption  are  just?  A  man 
says,  “Well,  tlie  inability  to  learn  a  language  constitutes 
a  ground  of  exemption.”  Yes,  if  it  is  real;  but  is  there 
any  man  who  will  allege  that  is  his  disability?  Most 
of  us  talk  one  language  already.  One  can  learn  anything 
if  one  wills.  There  is  a  multitude  of  ignorant  people 
ever  coming  over  here  from  Europe,  and  before  very 
long  many  of  them,  with  dull  and  undisciplined  minds, 
will  be  speaking  our  language  fluently.  The  brain  is  not 
the  only  faculty  used  in  the  acquisition  of  a  new  lan¬ 
guage.  A  man  who  mingles  among  the  people  takes  the 
language  in  through  his  pores.  And  after  all,  the  great 
faculty  is  the  will.  If  a  man  wills  to  learn  and  goes  out 
among  the  people,  he  will  learn.  It  is  a  different  thing 
learning  a  language  among  the  people  who  talk  it  from 
trying  to  pick  it  up  here.  As  Mr.  Wilder  used  to  put  it, 
learning  a  language  here  is  like  pouring  water  in  the 


14 


little  interstices  of  a  sponge  for  a  day  or  two  until  you 
get  it  full,  while  learning  a 'language  there  is  sousing 
your  sponge  in  the  water  and  letting  it  penetrate  every 
pore.  Every  one  of  us,  one  repeats,  who  has  learned 
one  language  is  able  to  learn  another  if  we  want  to, 
and  will  put  our  lives  into  it. 

Health 

Some  one  says,  “Is  not  want  of  health  a  sujB&cient 
excuse?”  Yes,  but  we  are  not  always  trustworthy  judges. 
A  man  may  judge  himself  with  too  great  lenience  or  too 
great  severity.  I  remember  a  story  that  Mr.  Forman  used 
to  tell  of  an  interview  he  had  with  a  student  in  the  state 
of  Iowa,  who  alleged  as  a  reason  for  not  going  as  a  mis¬ 
sionary  to  India  that  he  had  had  a  sunstroke.  He  pro¬ 
posed  accordingly  to  spend  his  life  in  Iowa.  “Well,  my 
friend,”  said  Mr.  Forman,  “where  did  you  have  that  sun¬ 
stroke?”  “I  had  it  here  in  this  state.”  “Now,  look 
here,”  said  Mr.  Forman,  “I  have  lived  most  of  my  life  in 
India,  and  I  have  never  had  a  sun-stroke,  and  you  pro¬ 
pose  to  spend  your  life  where  you  have  already  had  one 
sun-stroke  and  where  for  all  you  know  you  may  have 
another.” 

Now  Mission  Boards  are  not  looking  for  men  liable 
to  sun-stroke.  They  purpose  to  act  with  good  sense, 
and  because  they  do  act  so,  they  know  that  often  a  man 
who  is  not  perfect  physically  will  be  as  well  in  Chile 


IS 


or  Korea  or  China  or  India  as  he  will  be  here  at  home, 
and  that  it  is  worth  while  running  a  little  risk  for  the 
sake  of  the  good  w^ork  that  he  will  be  likely  to  do. 
They  have  sensible  medical  advisers,  who  will  decide 
for  any  man  or  woman  the  question  whether  they  are 
exempted  for  reasons  of  health. 

Spiritual  Qualifications 

Or  a  man  says,  “Is  not  the  want  of  spiritual  quali¬ 
fications  an  adequate  exemption?”  Never.  No  self- 
created  or  self-removable  disqualification  can  keep  a 
man  out  of  the  mission  field.  Every  one  of  us  may  have 
all  the  spiritual  qualifications  necessary  for  missionary 
work,  and  if  we  do  not  have  them,  it  is  a  difi&culty  which 
springs  from  our  own  moral  fault,  and  not  from  any 
of  those  circumstances  beyond  our  control  in  which  alone 
an  adequate  exemption  can  lie.  A  man  not  spiritually 
fitted  ought  not  to  go,  but  neither  is  he  fit  to  stay.  His 
immediate  duty  is  to  clean  up  and  empower  his  life. 

Americans  Needs 

Or  a  man  says,  “Is  not  the  great  need  here  at  home 
an  adequate  excuse?”  Where?  What  great  need  do  you 
mean  here  in  the  United  States?  Do  you  mean  the  great 
need  in  the  western  states?  I  could  name  half  a  dozen 
on  the  moment  whose  combined  population  is  less  than 
the  population  of  the  city  of  New  York,  and  they  are 


16 


the  great  home  mission  field  in  the  west,  and  they  have 
a  Protestant  evangelistic  agency  at  work  in  them  im¬ 
mensely  greater  than  that  employed  in  the  whole  city  of 
New  York.  Besides,  are  you  going  there?  As  for  the 
cities,  there  are  in  New  York  below  Fourteenth  Street 
for  about  half  a  million  people  more  than  one  hundred 
Protestant  chapels  and  churches.  And  are  you  going 
there?  Is  a  man  honest  who  alleges  as  a  reason  for  not 
going  to  the  foreign  mission  field  the  existence  of  a 
need  at  home  to  which  he  has  not  the  slightest  intention 
of  devoting  his  life?  There  is  great  and  real  need  at 
home,  and  workers  are  needed  for  it,  but  the  need  here 
in  the  United  States  constitutes  no  adequate  exemption 
from  the  missionary  call.  I  believe  there  are  men  who 
are  exempt  from  the  general  call  because  of  the  mani¬ 
festly  definite  and  special  divine  work  that  is  laid  upon 
their  shoulders  here,  but  no  man  may  allege  a  mere  gen¬ 
eral  need  existing  here  at  home,  least  of  all  a  general 
need  which  he  intends  subsequently  to  ignore,  and  under 
the  cover  of  that,  slip  out  from  the  grip  of  the  mission¬ 
ary  obligation.  No  man  has  a  right  to  settle  in  a  country 
town  in  Ohio  and  practice  law,  on  the  ground  that  there 
is  so  much  greater  need  for  Christian  work  in  the  slums 
of  New  York  than  in  central  Africa.  No  man  has  a 
right  to  go  into  business  in  Montreal  under  the  pretext 
that  the  vast  West  is  so  much  more  needy  than  China.  If 
I  refuse  to  preach  the  gospel  in  India  because  it 


17 


needs  to  be  preached  in  Arizona,  or  Assiniboia,  what 
relevancy  does  that  argument  have  to  my  preaching 
the  gospel  nowhere,  but  subsequently  settling  down  to 
an  easy  and  selfish  life  in  Savannah  or  Halifax?  Or 
what  consistency  is  there  in  refusing  to  go  to  Siam  be¬ 
cause  the  need  of  Christian  work  in  the  rural  districts 
in  America  is  so  great,  and  then  settling  down  to  preach 
the  gospel  in  some  city  or  large  town?  The  fundamen- 
tal  necessity  of  life  and  character  is  veracity,  and  such 
a  course  is  the  antithesis  of  veracity. 

Home  Professional  Training 

Or  a  man  says;  “I  have  already  started  to  prepare 
for  some  work  here  at  home.  I  am  on  my  medical 
course,  or  my  law  course,  or  my  course  in  pedagogy.  Do 
you  mean  I  am  to  throw  up  all  I  have  gained  and  go 
out  to  the  mission  field?”  I  do  not  say  so.  I  do  say 
that  the  fact  that  you  have  got  so  far  does  not  constitute 
a  presumption  that  you  are  exempt.  All  that  special 
training  may  have  been  given  you  for  some  specific 
purpose;  no  knowledge  is  lost  on  the  mission  field. 
Besides,  I  ask  you  to  stop  and  think  a  moment.  You  have 
already  got  your  professions  chosen  and  are  headed 
toward  them,  and  many  of  you  have  only  considered 
the  necessity  of  a  call  as  a  sort  of  afterthought  when 
brought  to  face  foreign  missions;  you  never  thought  of 
it  when  you  were  making  your  choice  of  your  profession. 


18 


but  only  now  when  the  missionary  claim  is  pressing  un¬ 
easily  upon  your  conscience.  But  are  you  sure  that  God 
wants  you  to  be  a  doctor  or  a  teacher?  Ought  you  not 
to  have  as  much  assurance  that  it  is  God’s  will  that  you 
should  be,  as  you  think  is  needed  in  the  case  of  a  for¬ 
eign  missionary?  As  a  Christian  man,  your  life  belongs 
to  Christ  and  your  business  is  to  do  the  will  of  God. 
Are  you  assured  that  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  you  should 
go  on  with  your  preparation  for  some  secular  work  at 
home?  If  not,  have  you  a  right  to  go  on  with  it?  If 
you  think  you  have,  will  you  not  admit  the  legitimacy 
of  the  same  element  of  possible  uncertainty  in  the 
missionary  call? 

What  profession  is  it  that  you  believe  warrants  you 
in  giving  your  life  to  it  instead  of  to  the  missionary  en¬ 
terprise?  Is  it  law?  I  have  no  word  to  say  against  the 
practice  of  law.  But  I  remind  you,  as  Mr.  Depew  is 
reported  to  have  stated  to  the  graduating  class  in  the  Yale 
Law  School  some  years  ago,  that  there  were  then  more 
than  60,000  lawyers  in  this  land;  and,  as  Justice 
Brewer  is  said  to  have  declared  at  a  meeting  of  the 
American  Bar  Association,  in  St.  Louis,  that  not  much 
more  than  one-half  of  that  number  could  find  legitimate 
business  to  do.  The  rest  had  to  do  other  things  or  manu¬ 
facture  illegitimate  business  on  which  to  live.  And  the 
number  of  lawyers  has  doubled  since  then. 

Is  it  medicine  that  you  are  going  to  take  up?  There 


19 


are  more  than  150,000  doctors  in  this  country  already, 
one  to  every  six  hundred  of  the  population.  You  well 
know  that  there  is  not  enough  sickness  and  disease 
among  that  many  people  to  maintain  a  doctor,  and  that 
is  one  reason  why  there  are  so  many  quacks  and  cor¬ 
rupt  and  unworthy  men  in  the  profession.  The  Neiv 
York  Sun  some  years  ago  reported  Dr.  Billings  as 
complaining,  at  the  meeting  of  the  American  Medical 
Association  in  session  in  New  Orleans,  of  the  excess  of 
medical  colleges.  The  country  needed  about  2500  medi¬ 
cal  graduates  annually,  he  said,  and  it  graduated  10,000 
to  12,500. 

Do  you  intend  to  teach?  There  are  more  than  600,- 
000  teachers  in  America,  and  you  very  well  know  that 
every  time  an  attractive  opportunity  presents  itself  there 
are  scores  of  applicants. 

I  present  you  an  opening  in  which  we  cannot  find 
enough  men,  doctors,  teachers,  ministers,  workers  of  all 
sorts,  all  over  the  mission  field;  a  thousand  million  sin¬ 
ning  and  suffering  men  and  women,  with  only  a  little 
handful  of  folk  of  all  nationalities  giving  the  gospel  to 
them.  I  do  not  understand  the  attitude  of  the  man  who 
can  deliberately  face  that  comparison  and  then  set  up  the 
claim  that  he  feels  he  is  chosen  to  practice  medicine  or 
law  or  teaching  here  in  this  country  unless  he  has  a 
special  call  designating  him  as  one  of  the  men  to  go 
out  to  the  immensely  greater  need,  and  such  a  call  as  he 


20 


has  not  regarded  as  necessary  to  his  practice  of  medicine 
or  law  or  teaching. 


Love  of  Home 

Or  a  man  says,  yet  once  more,  “Is  not  the  love  of 
home  an  exemption?”  Let  Christ  reply.  “He  that 
loveth  father  or  mother  more  than  me  is  not  worthy 
of  me.”  Or  a  man  says,  “Is  not  the  love  of  life,  the 
desire  to  spend  it  richly  here  an  exemption?”  Let 
Christ  answer  again.  “He  that  hateth  not  his  father  and 
his  mother,  and  his  brother  and  his  sister,  yea,  and  his 
own  life,  he  cannot  be  my  disciple.”  Life  an  exemp¬ 
tion!  Life  was  given  us  on  such  terms  as  to  constitute 
a  presumption  for  its  expenditure,  not  to  be  nursed  care¬ 
fully  in  velvet,  not  to  be  spent  in  ease,  but  to  be  poured 
out  in  the  richness  of  great  sacrifice. 

Very  often  I  have  gone  out  to  the  little  graveyard  in 
Salisbury,  North  Carolina,  to  a  grave  in  the  center  of 
the  yard  that  I  found  many  years  ago  when  I  was  wan¬ 
dering  through  the  cemetery  between  trains.  I  remem¬ 
ber  still  the  first  summer  day  when  I  came  upon  that 
grave.  Something  on  the  stone  caught  my  eye  from  a 
distance.  I  came  up  and  read  upon  it  the  inscription 
which  stated  that  there  lay  the  body  of  F.  M.  Kent, 
Lieutenant  Colonel  of  the  First  Louisiana  Regulars,  who 
died  in  1864,  in  the  month  of  April,  and  underneath 
were  these  words:  “He  gave  his  life  for  the  cause  that 


21 


he  loved.”  Near  by  was  the  grave  of  John  R.  Pearson, 
First  Lieutenant  of  the  Seventh  Regiment  of  North 
Carolina,  who  was  shot  at  Petersburg,  at  the  age  of 
eighteen,  and  beneath  the  name  and  simple  record  were 
the  words,  “I  look  for  the  resurrection  of  the  dead.”  And 
I  took  off  my  hat  and  stood  beside  the  graves  of  the 
eighteen-year-old  lieutenant  and  the  older  colonel  who 
had  given  their  lives  for  the  cause  that  they  loved.  Did 
they  wait,  do  you  suppose,  until  Jefferson  Davis  had 
served  a  personal  summons  upon  them?  Was  that  the 
way  men  did  in  those  days?  Did  they  refuse  to  volun¬ 
teer  until  they  had,  each  man  of  them,  a  per¬ 
sonal  call  with  his  own  name  filled  in,  signed  by  the 
hand  of  Abraham  Lincoln  or  Jefferson  Davis?  Men 
despise  the  spirit  that  would  have  prompted  such  an 
attitude.  Shall  we  do  less  than  despise  it? 

False  Premises 

This  whole  business  of  asking  for  special  calls  in 
the  missionary  work  does  violence  to  the  Bible.  No 
man  thinks  of  interpreting  his  Bible  so  in  other  matters. 
There  is  the  command,  “Go  ye  into  all  the  world,  and 
preach  the  gospel  to  every  creature.”  You  say,  “That 
means  other  men.”  There  is  the  promise,  “Come  unto 
me,  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give 
you  rest.”  You  say,  “That  means  me.”  You  must  have 
a  special  divine  indication  that  you  fall  under  the  com- 


22 


mand;  you  do  not  ask  any  special  divine  indication 
that  you  fall  under  the  promise.  By  what  right  do  we 
draw  this  line  of  distinction  between  the  obligations  of 
Christianity  and  its  privileges,  and  accept  the  privileges 
as  applying  to  every  Christian  and  relegate  its  obliga¬ 
tions  to  the  conscience  of  the  few? 

It  does  violence  to  the  working  of  the  spirit  of  God. 
He  does  not  work  over  men’s  faculties;  He  works 
through  them.  In  every  other  department  of  life  He 
does  it;  He  will  do  it  in  this  department,  or  He  will 
not  work  at  all. 

It  does  violence  to  the  ordinary  canons  of  common 
sense  and  honest  judgment.  We  do  not  think  of  order¬ 
ing  other  departments  of  our  life  on  this  basis.  By  what 
right  do  we  single  out  this  department  and  apply  to  it 
these  exceptional  canons?  I  think  ex-President  Patton, 
of  Princeton,  was  representing  the  situation  truthfully 
when  he  used  the  illustration:  that  if  he  were  employed 
by  the  owner  of  a  great  vineyard  to  gather  grapes  in  the 
vineyard,  and  the  general  instructions  were  that  as  many 
grapes  as  possible  should  be  gathered,  and  he  came  down 
to  the  gate  of  the  vineyard  and  found  there  around  the 
walls  the  vines  well  plucked  and  the  ground  covered 
over  with  pickers,  and  away  off  in  the  distance  no  pickers 
at  all  and  the  vines  loaded  to  the  ground,  he  would  not 
need  any  special  visit  and  order  from  the  owner  of  the 
vineyard  to  instruct  him  as  to  what  his  duty  was.  Do 
we? 


23 


There  is  something  wonderfully  misleading  and  de¬ 
lusive  in  this  business  of  missionary  calls.  With  many 
of  us  it  is  not  a  missionary  call  at  all  that  we  are 
looking  for;  it  is  a  shove,  that  is  all.  There  are  a  great 
many  of  us  who  would  never  hear  a  call  if  it  came; 
somebody  must  come  and  coerce  us  before  we  will  go 
into  the  missionary  work.  There  are  men  who  say 
they  would  go  if  they  were  called,  but  they 
would  not  go.  Back  in  Jesus’  day  men  thought  they 
would  do  things  if  they  only  had  certain  evidence,  but 
when  the  evidence  came  they  did  not  do  them.  We  think 
we  would  believe  on  Christ  if  we  saw  Him.  Most  of 
the  men  who  saw  Him  did  not  believe  on  Him.  It  is  the 
old  rebuke  of  Abraham  over  again.  “Father  Abraham,” 
said  the  outcast,  “will  you  not  send  some  special  mes¬ 
senger  to  warn  my  brothers?”  Said  Abraham,  “They 
have  Moses  and  the  prophets;  if  they  will  not  hear  them, 
neither  will  they  be  persuaded,  though  one  rose  from 
the  dead.”  There  are  many  men  who  say  they  would 
believe  in  Cbrstianity  if  they  had  a  miracle.  They  would 
not  believe  in  Christianity  if  they  had  a  miracle.  The 
men  who  will  not  believe  in  Christianity  without  a 
miracle  will  not  believe  in  Christianity  with  one.  The 
men  who  will  not  go  out  to  the  mission  field,  as  a  rule, 
without  this  specified  method  of  being  called  would  not 
recognize  it  if  it  came.  It  is  a  matter  of  the  whole  bias 


24 


and  bent  of  a  man’s  character,  whether  he  is  one  of  these 
reluctant,  passive  men,  who  stand  still  until  they  are 
pushed,  or  one  of  the  aggressive,  eager  men  who  move 
until  they  are  stopped. 

PaiiVs  Call  to  Macedonia 

One  likes  to  go  back  and  read  over  and  over  the  life 
of  the  Apostle  Paul  as  illustrative  of  the  right  type  of 
man.  He  never  sat  down  and  waited  for  a  dream  to 
come  and  guide  him;  he  never  waited  for  external, 
coercive  direction  to  shape  his  course.  He  was  work¬ 
ing  through  what  we  now  call  Asia  Minor,  and  his  path 
was  determined  by  indications  of  the  Spirit,  not  as  to 
what  he  should  do,  but  as  to  what  he  should  not  do. 
The  Spirit  forbade  work  in  Asia.  He  tried  Bithynia,  and 
was  again  blocked.  So  he  came  down  to  Troas  through 
walls  of  negative  guidance  (Acts  xvi:6-8).  Paul  did 
not  say:  “I  will  wait  till  I  feel  a  call.”  He  pressed 
ahead  until  he  was  instructed.  There  is  a  great  deal  too 
much  lethargic  waiting  for  divine  guidance,  when  what 
God  is  wanting  is  to  see  some  sign  of  life  and  movement 
to  guide.  You  can  steer  a  moving,  but  not  a  motionless 
ship.  Doubtless  a  man  may  bustle  about  so  in  his  own 
fussy  plans  as  to  be  in  no  fit  condition  to  hear  divine 
counsel  or  to  seek  it;  but  there  is  no  warrant  in  Paul’s 
method  for  the  course  of  those  who  refuse  to  move 
toward  the  foreign  field  unless  compelled  from  without. 


25 


At  the  end  of  his  hedging  in  and  hedging  off,  Paul 
got  some  positive  leading;  but  even  then  his  conclusion 
of  duty  was  an  inference.  He  interpreted  his  dream  in 
the  spirit  of  his  life.  He  was  a  going  man  and  he  was 
looking  for  beckonings.  It  was  the  man,  not  the  dream, 
that  led  to  his  crossing  into  Europe.  Some  modern 
evader  would  have  called  it  a  mere  dream,  and  pro¬ 
nounced  it  wholly  insuflScient  reason  for  any  such  se¬ 
rious  forward  step. 

Ramsay  thinks  the  Macedonian  whom  Paul  saw  was 
Luke.  How  otherwise  could  Paul  know  it  was  a  Mace¬ 
donian  than  by  recognizing  a  Macedonian  acquaintance? 
There  was  nothing  peculiar  in  the  dress  of  the  Mace¬ 
donians,  and  Luke  was  probably  the  only  Macedonian  he 
knew.  “We  can  imagine,”  says  Ramsay,  “how  Paul 
came  to  Troas,  in  doubt  as  to  what  should  be  done.  As 
a  harbor  it  formed  the  link  between  Asia  and  Macedonia. 
Here  he  met  the  Macedonian  Luke;  and  with  his  view 
turned  onwards  he  slept,  and  beheld  in  a  vision  his 
Macedonian  acquaintance  beckoning  him  onward  to  his 
own  country.” 

Possibly  Paul  and  Luke  had  been  sitting  up  late  that 
night  talking  about  Macedonia,  and  Luke  had  urged  argu¬ 
ments  by  which  he  would  persuade  Paul  to  go  over,  and 
when  Paul  went  to  sleep  he  was  full  of  Luke’s  arguments, 
and  at  last  had  his  dream  and  there  was  Luke  again  ap¬ 
pealing  to  him  to  go  across  to  Macedonia.  It  was  not 


26 


the  dream  that  took  Paul  over.  The  dream  was  the  last 
confirmation,  but  Paul  would  have  got  to  Macedonia 
without  any  such  dream.  The  dream  was  not  the  call. 
The  facts  of  the  world  and  of  Paul’s  own  life  were  shap¬ 
ing  his  course  according  to  the  will  of  God.  He  was  the 
sort  of  man  who  did  not  wait  for  external  guidance,  who 
sat  down  until  somebody  came,  upset  him  and  made  him 
go;  he  was  the  type  of  man  who  fixed  his  eyes  on  a 
great  goal  and  moved  toward  it.  “Yes,”  he  says,  “I  have 
been  ambitious.”  What  for?  A  special  call?  “Yea,  so 
I  have  been  ambitious  to  preach  the  gospel,  not  where 
Christ  has  been  already  named,  lest  I  should  build  upon 
another  man’s  foundation;  but,  as  it  is  written.  To  whom 
he  was  not  spoken  of,  they  shall  see;  and  they  that  have 
not  heard  shall  understand.”  (Rom.  15:20,21.) 

Essential  Attitudes  of  Mind 

Well,  you  ask.  Do  you  mean  that  we  should  take  our 
lives  in  our  own  hands  in  this  matter?  That  is  precisely 
what  I  am  appealing  against.  That  is  exactly  what  we  have 
done.  We  have  taken  our  lives  in  our  own  hands  and  pro¬ 
posed  to  go  our  own  way  unless  God  compels  us  to  go 
some  other  way.  What  1  ask  is  that  we  should  give  our 
lives  over  into  Christ’s  hands,  to  go  Christ’s  way  until  God 
shall  reveal  to  us  some  special  individual  path  on  either 
side  of  that  great  general  way  which  Jesus  Christ  has 
marked  out  before  His  church  and  for  which  He  is  call- 


27 


ing  everywhere  for  men. 

But  you  say,  “Do  you  mean  that  every  one  is  to  go, 
or  to  try  to  go?”  No,  indeed,  I  do  not.  I  am  not  trying 
to  specify  any  course  of  duty  for  any  man,  or  any  method 
of  the  revelation  of  duty  to  life.  God  has  His  own  way 
of  guiding  every  life.  I  believe  He  wants  men  as  Chris¬ 
tian  lawyers,  doctors,  teachers,  business  men,  ministers, 
artisans  at  home.  And  I  believe  that  if  we  neglect  our 
own  house  or  nation  we  are  worse  than  infidels.  What 
I  am  trying  to  do  is  to  cut  out  some  of  the  quibbles 
and  sophistries  and  self-deceptions  by  which  men  satisfy 
themselves  in  the  evasion  of  missionary  duty,  and  to 
correct  honest  misconceptions  which  confuse  and  mis¬ 
lead  men.  I  plead  that  the  misisonary  duty  be  given 
its  fair  consideration  in  the  investment  and  use  of  life. 

I  want  to  say  three  last  things: 

Conscripts  Not  Wanted 

In  the  first  place,  God  does  not  want  any  conscripts. 
If  that  is  what  we  are  waiting  for — to  be  conscripted — I 
do  not  believe  that  the  call  will  come.  What  He  wants 
is  volunteers,  men  who  will  give  themselves  in  the  spirit 
of  Isaiah,  “Here  am  I,  Lord;  send  me.” 

Every  Man  a  Volunteer 

In  the  second  place,  for  each  true  Christian  the  post 
of  sacrifice  and  of  difficulty  is  the  post  of  presumptive 


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duty.  I  do  not  understand  how  a  man  can  turn  aside  to 
make  a  fortune  here,  to  gratify  an  ambition  here,  without 
a  special  call.  I  do  understand  how  a  man  can  feel  that 
without  such  a  call  it  is  his  duty  to  give  himself  to  the 
post  of  greatest  toil  and  earthly  loss  and  danger.  I  re¬ 
member  one  of  the  illustrations  that  Mr.  Charles  Studd 
used  when  he  was  here,  of  the  appeal  that  was  made  for 
volunteers  before  the  Ashanti  expedition  went  some  years 
ago  to  Africa.  They  called  out  at  Windsor  the  Scots 
Guards,  and  the  colonel  commanding  made  a  frank 
statement  of  just  what  the  expedition  was  and  what 
was  involved;  then  he  called  for  volunteers,  and  he 
turned  away  for  a  moment,  and  when  he  turned  back 
the  whole  line  was  standing,  apparently  just  as  it  had 
been  before.  He  looked  up  and  down  the  line  for  a 
moment  in  indignation,  and  then  he  said,  “What!  the 
Scots  Guards,  and  no  volunteers!”  and  one  of  the 
officers  standing  by  said,  “Colonel,  the  whole  line  stepped 
forward.”  They  were  not  waiting  for  any  specific  per¬ 
sonal  injunction.  Every  man  jumped  at  the  chance  of 
sacrifice,  recognized  in  the  call  to  hardship  and  danger 
the  glorious  call,  and  would  only  be  turned  back  from 
it,  as  Gideon’s  companies  turned  back,  when  specially 
exempted  by  the  elimination  of  God. 

Love  Never  Faileth 

And,  last  of  all,  I  think  love  will  hear  calls  where  the 


29 


loveless  heart  will  not  know  that  they  are  sounding.  Will 
you  look  in  your  own  heart  again  and  make  sure  whether 
or  not  the  call  has  not  been  there  all  the  time?  Have 
you  been  near  enough  to  Jesus  Christ  to  hear  Him  speak? 
Has  your  heart  been  open  enough  to  the  world  in  sym¬ 
pathy  and  love  to  hear  the  call  of  its  need?  If  there  were 
a  hundred  little  children  crying,  a  mother  would  be  able 
to  pick  out  the  voices  of  her  own,  especially  if  they  were 
voices  of  pain  and  suffering.  There  is  a  mighty  keen¬ 
ness  in  the  ears  of  love,  and  I  wonder  whether,  after  all, 
that  may  not  explain  a  great  deal  that  one  is  perplexed 
over  in  this  matter  of  special  missionary  calls,  whether 
after  all  it  is  not  often  just  a  matter  of  callous  heart,  of 
reluctant  will,  of  sealed  mind. 

God  so  loved  the  world  that  He  gave.  It  was  need 
in  the  world  plus  love  in  God  that  constituted  the  call  to 
Christ.  Do  we  need  more  than  sufficed  for  Him?  If  they 
were  our  own,  would  we  hesitate  and  hold  back? 

“What  if  your  own  were  starving. 

Fainting  with  famine  pain. 

And  yet  you  knew  where  golden  grew 
Rich  fruit  and  ripened  grain. 

Would  you  turn  aside  while  they  gasped  and  died, 
And  leave  them  to  their  pain?” 

Let  us  lay  aside  now  all  double-dealing  and  subter- 


30 


fuge,  all  the  evasions  by  which  the  devil  is  attempting 
to  persuade  us  to  escape  from  our  duty,  and  let  us  get 
up  like  men  and  look  at  duty  and  do  it.  Students  are 
old  enough  to  decide  to  do  their  duty.  They  are  old 
enough  to  decide  to  go  to  college,  they  are  old  enough 
to  decide  for  law  and  medicine  and  other  professions; 
they  are  old  enough,  too,  to  decide  this  question  also. 
God  forbid  that  we  should  try  behind  any  kind  of  pre¬ 
text  to  hide  from  the  solemn  personal  consideration  of 
our  vital  duty.  “Go  ye,  into  all  the  world  and  preach 
the  gospel  to  every  creature.”  Have  you  any  reason  for 
not  going  that  you  could  give  to  Jesus  Christ?  That  is 
the  real  question  for  every  man  of  us. 


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